You are so right. Some of the newly revealed IMs reflect exactly what you are talking about. The kid loves the idea that a congressman wants to talk to him, but he doesn't get the idea he is only being perved and groomed. He keeps trying to bring the subject back to government and politics, and Foley ignores him and continues to corner him with sexually leading questions and comments. In one he even asks the kid for (and gets) an on-screen "kiss".

If thast's not abuse, what is? What a bastard.

Much love,Larry

_________________________Nobody living can ever stop meAs I go walking my freedom highway.Nobody living can make me turn back:This land was made for you and me.(Woody Guthrie)

In my opinion, and in the opinion of most mental health professionals who deal with sexual abuse issues, the sexually explicit content of these emails and IM's constitutes sexual abuse in and of itself, and is a gross violation of sexual boundaries that can come back to trouble the victim at some point in the future.

I agree John. In fact, Dan Allender in his book, The Wounded Heart, lists several types of sexual abuse, among which is intrusive interest in the anatomy and development of a child. If I were the 16yo boy, I would have felt very awkward and intruded upon by such questioning, and would most likely have terminated the conversation early on.

This one is pretty incredible. Apart from the explicit statement that teenagers aren't safe around Congressman, it proposes the solution of punishing the victims. If kids aren't safe in the program as presently constituted, then the safety aspects of the program need to be improved and their enforcement needs to be more diligent.

If a biridge across a river is damaged and unsafe, what's the way forward? Tear down the bridge and tell people they can't cross the river anymore? Or repair the bridge?

Debate Turns to Future of Page ProgramSome call for its end, saying lawmakers can't be trusted. Others, including past pages, defend what has long been a Hill institution.

WASHINGTON — When Republican representatives hooked up for a conference call this week to discuss the political crisis over former Rep. Mark Foley's salacious messages to former pages, the most heated discussion was not over House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert's handling of the matter, but over the future of the congressional page program.

"They all supported the speaker," said one participant in the call. "It got tense over whether the entire page program should be abolished."

A few lawmakers, notably Rep. Ray LaHood (R-Ill.), have suggested that the program be scrapped. "Send the pages home," he said, noting at one point that it's "pretty obvious" lawmakers can't be trusted around them.

But after Congress scrubs off the latest tarnish, the venerable program is likely to persevere. For senators and representatives, it's a much-cherished perk that they can bestow on the children of constituents. For former pages, who ardently defend the program, it's an inspirational opportunity to see politicians at work in the cloakrooms of power.

"For every page failed by a congressman, there is a page who turned out to be a congressman," Kevin O'Connor, a Republican page in the summer of 2003, wrote in an e-mail. "I left the page program with a broadened perspective, a wildly diverse array of friends and no regrets."

There are currently 63 House pages and 30 Senate pages, mostly 16-year-olds. They attend high school starting at 6 a.m. and then run errands for Congress — answering phones, taking messages, delivering documents — often late into the night, when they return to secured dorms to finish their homework.

Foley's sexually explicit messages have recalled the program's lowest point, in 1983, when two House members were censured for sexual relationships with pages. A six-member board made up of lawmakers and staffers was then set up to oversee the program. But in this case, only one of the three congressional members was told about Foley's messages.

Hastert has rebuffed calls to suspend or end the program. Instead, he said Thursday that he was looking "for a person of high caliber to advise us." He also set up a tip line to report inappropriate behavior toward pages.

The patronage program has a long history, starting with a 9-year-old appointed by Sen. Daniel Webster of Massachusetts in 1829. It's a favorite of the Capitol's 535 politicians because it allows them to reward promising students — and sometimes the scions of powerful political allies.

For years, Rep. Dan Rostenkowski (D-Ill.), chairman of the powerful Ways and Means Committee, visited Gordon Tech High School in Chicago to select two pages to join him in Washington for the school year. On the Senate side, Sen. Strom Thurmond (R-S.C.), who served the longest in the upper chamber, brought new pages to his office from South Carolina every month.

These days, the page program is more regulated and has strict merit requirements — students can't be appointed unless they have 3.0 grade-point averages and letters of recommendation from community leaders.

But the families of some pages are politically well-connected.

Robert Rose, a Senate page in 2002 and now a senior at Georgetown University, said his mother's cousin was a political memorabilia expert who became friends with an aide to Thurmond, who nominated Rose. "This sort of thing is very typical," he said. "I only knew of one or two people in my page class who did not have some sort of prior connection to somebody in office."

But Shyanna Hughes of Los Angeles said just a few in her class arrived through connections. "It was kind of obvious: 'OK, they have a lot of money. OK, her dad is the governor of a state,' " said Hughes, who was a page in 1997. "You could definitely tell there were some there, but I would say it was a very low percentage."

Most of the pages during the 1992-93 school year had no ties to politicians, said Naomi Wallace, who was appointed by Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Los Angeles). "I had one roommate from Michigan who competed against 3,000 applicants and another from West Virginia whose family income was $20,000 a year," said Wallace, who is shopping around a book about her year in Washington.

Mindful of the political calendar, Wallace, now a theater arts student in London, dismissed talk of scrapping the program as rhetoric timed for the midterm elections. "In my opinion, 16-year-olds should not be punished because the Republicans are afraid of losing their majority in the House," she said.

Wallace said pages were warned to be wary. "Sexwise, we were constantly reminded about the scandal from a few years prior," she said.

James Kotecki, of Raleigh, N.C., remembers that the pages at his orientation in 2003 were told to address lawmakers formally. But he said the informal conversations the politicians initiated were among the most rewarding experiences. "They just made us love politics even more, to see it at an up-close level," said Kotecki, now at Georgetown University. "If they feel they can't have informal contact with us, the pages would lose a very valuable experience."

The rules on fraternization are so strict that one page said even his mother had to prove who she was to see him.

"When my mom came, she had to sign me out, show ID and talk to my proctor before she could take me out," said Richard Frohlichstein, who served as a page from Missouri. "When someone asks me about the program, I can never think of a negative thing."

The idea that one congressman's lewd behavior toward male pages could jeopardize the existence of the program has alarmed its graduates.

Zack Hall, a University of Texas sophomore who was a House page in 2004, has launched "Save the Congressional Page Program" on the networking site Facebook.com.

"I think getting rid of the page program would be avoiding the problem," he said. "The problem is, members of Congress are powerful people and we need to protect pages, not just get rid of it."

This view is shared by some powerful ex-pages — members of Congress.

"It's just as good a program now as it was for me in 1938," said Rep. John D. Dingell (D-Mich.), a former page who was first elected in 1955 and is now the most senior member of Congress. "Asking if we should suspend the page program is the wrong question. We should be asking what has happened to Congress that would bring us to even consider ending this terrific opportunity for talented teenagers."

So Foley's activities were known among party heads as early as 2000. Are we surprised? The primacy of political gain over the welfare of our kids is a problem we have seen so many times already.

What seems to emerge from this new story is that the Republican Party is anxious to display a vigorous response to the scandal that will produce results before the elections.

_______________________________________________________________

Report: GOP lawmaker warned Foley in '00

A Republican member of Congress confronted then-Rep. Mark Foley (news, bio, voting record) about his Internet communications with teenagers as early as 2000, according to a newspaper report.

The report in the Washington Post pushes back by at least five years the date when a member of Congress acknowledges learning of the Florida Republican's questionable behavior toward pages.

It came as the Republican leadership attempted to present a united front on the congressional page scandal that has rocked the GOP a month before midterm elections and put House Speaker Dennis Hastert on shaky ground.

Though Rep. Adam Putnam (news, bio, voting record), R-Fla., insisted Sunday that "the dirty laundry in our conference is gone," that claim appeared to be premature.

The Post said that a former page showed Kolbe some Internet messages from Foley that had made the page uncomfortable. Kolbe's press secretary, Korenna Cline, told the Post that a Kolbe staff member advised the page last week to discuss the matter with the clerk of the House.

Hastert and his aides have been criticized for failing to act promptly after receiving warnings about Foley's questionable electronic communications with pages.

Hastert since has insisted he was not aware of the communications until recently. But on the day after Foley resigned, New York Rep. Tom Reynolds said he had told Hastert months ago about concerns that Foley had sent inappropriate messages. Reynolds now says he cannot remember exactly when he learned of Foley's e-mails or when he told Hastert about them.

Putnam sat in Sunday for Reynolds, who canceled an appearance on ABC's "This Week" because, said an aide, he was suffering from a "flu-like" ailment. Reynolds is facing a tough re-election fight against Democrat Jack Davis.

Reynolds has been criticized by Democrats who say he did too little to protect a male teenage page from Foley who resigned Sept. 29 after disclosure of his inappropriate electronic messages to former congressional pages. Foley is now under investigation by federal and Florida authorities.

Putnam, who heads the Republican Policy Committee, sought to make the case that Hastert's office "acted proactively, they acted aggressively, and within hours of the explicit e-mails coming to light, they demanded Foley's resignation."

One Republican lawmaker said Sunday that those who participated in a cover-up would have to resign.

"Anybody that hindered this in any kind of way, tried to step in the way of hiding this, covering it up, is going to have to step down. Whoever that is," said Rep. Tom Davis, R-Va.

The House ethics committee is investigating the matter. If it finds evidence of a cover-up, the punishment could range from a mild rebuke in a committee report to a House vote of censure or expulsion.

Rep. Patrick McHenry, R-N.C., said Democrats should be investigated to see whether they leaked the explicit e-mails to gain a political advantage before the elections, although the lawmaker acknowledged he had no evidence indicating that was the case.

Responded Rep. Charles Rangel (news, bio, voting record), D-N.Y.: "I think it's ridiculous. But if I was in a bind, as the Republicans are now, I guess I would be reaching for straws. But it's sad."

Hastert, R-Ill., last week tried to blame the Democrats and the news media for leaking the story but then accepted responsibility. He's resisted pressure to resign his speaker's post over his handling of the scandal.

"There's been a lot of ducking and dodging and diving and weaving," said Rep. Ray LaHood (news, bio, voting record), R-Ill. "There is a lot of fingerpointing that had gone on earlier in the week, but I do think people are behind the speaker now."

Republicans have mixed views on the upcoming elections.

"This is going to be the most difficult 30 days in the last 12 years that we've been the majority party," LaHood said. The GOP took power after the 1994 election.

Almost half of Americans surveyed in a recent Associated Press-Ipsos poll said recent disclosures of corruption and scandal will be extremely or very important to their vote.

Also, more than half of those surveyed in a Newsweek poll released this weekend believe Hastert tried to cover up news of Foley's messages to the pages. That poll gives Democrats the advantage on handling moral values, normally a Republican strong point.

Reynolds began an ad campaign Saturday in which he apologized for not doing more.

"Nobody's angrier and more disappointed that I didn't catch his lies," Reynolds says. "I trusted that others had investigated. Looking back, more should have been done, and for that, I am sorry."

Putnam was on ABC, McHenry and Rangel appeared on CNN's "Late Edition," Davis and LaHood were on CBS' "Face the Nation."

_______________________________________________________________

_________________________Nobody living can ever stop meAs I go walking my freedom highway.Nobody living can make me turn back:This land was made for you and me.(Woody Guthrie)

Hastert spoke to reporters Tuesday, insisting that he and the GOP House leadership had done nothing wrong in the House page scandal involving ex-Rep. Mark Foley, R-Fla. The speaker heralded the economy: "We've lowered people's taxes. They have more money in their pockets to spend," he said.

Meanwhile, ABC News has learned that one former staffer who worked for the GOP leadership will tell the House Ethics Committee Thursday about an incident several years ago in which he was alerted that an apparently inebriated Foley had tried to gain access to the pages' dormitory.

A source with firsthand knowledge of events says that this coming Thursday, Kirk Fordham -- former chief of staff to both Foley and more recently Rep. Tom Reynolds, R-N.Y. -- will testify that a few years ago he was told by then-House clerk Jeff Trandahl that Foley had been stopped while trying to enter the pages' dorm in an apparently intoxicated state. The source said Fordham will testify that he recalls this being the event that convinced both him and Trandahl to warn Hastert's office, with Fordham designated to have the conversation with Hastert's chief of staff, Scott Palmer. The source said that both aides had been watching Foley's behavior with pages and that Fordham had counseled Foley to watch his behavior.

The source tells ABC News that Fordham will testify that he alerted Palmer that Foley had a pattern of displaying inappropriate behavior toward pages. Asked about Fordham's claim that he met with Palmer in approximately 2003 to warn him about Foley's behavior, Palmer said in a statement, "What Kirk Fordham said did not happen."

Last month, before the Foley scandal broke, Rep. Ginny Brown-Waite, R-Fla., also learned about the dormitory incident, which she said she was told about from firsthand sources. After learning about an inappropriate but not sexually charged e-mail Foley sent, which had been posted on ABCNEWS.com's "The Blotter" on Thursday Sept. 28, Brown-Waite decided to launch her own investigation. She said she alerted GOP leadership on Friday Sept. 29 about both the dorm incident and about pages who had been made to feel uncomfortable by Foley. That evening the Foley scandal erupted with news of the lurid Instant Messages Foley had sent former pages.

But in Aurora, Ill., today Hastert told ABC News that he didn't know of any Foley incident other than those conducted via computer. "I understood what my staff has told me, and they've handled it as well as they should have," he said. "In 20/20 hindsight, you could probably do everything a little better."

"If there was a problem, if there was a cover-up then we should find that out through the investigation process," Hastert said. "They'll be under oath, and we'll find out if they did cover up something; then they should not continue to have their jobs."

Across the country, the scandal continued to reverberate. In Oklahoma City, the FBI interviewed former congressional page Jordan Edmund -- and his lawyer -- for 2½ hours about inappropriate e-mails Foley may have sent him.

McCain Wants an Independent Investigation

In Michigan, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., broke from the Republican Party line and renewed a call for an independent investigation of the House page scandal. "We cannot tolerate the intolerable," McCain said, adding that congressional leadership should have called for an outside group of highly respected former congressmen to get to the bottom of inappropriate contact Foley may have had with pages and whether anyone in the House leadership erred by not doing something sooner about the problem.

Such a group would need to be selected and "look at this quickly and assign responsibility and recommend measures that need to be taken," McCain said. An independent investigation would restore "credibility" to the leadership, McCain said, because after all, "there's conflicting stories as we all know as to who knew what and when." Evoking the Watergate scandal, McCain said it all invokes former GOP Sen. "Howard Baker's famous comment: 'What did they know and when did they know it?'"

McCain's was not the only voice embattled Hastert may not have been happy to hear Tuesday. The Foley scandal continued to distract from issues the GOP leadership would rather control and has further instilled an impression that the House leadership tried to cover up Foley's behavior. In an ABC News poll released this week, 64 percent of those surveyed said they believed the GOP House leadership tried to cover up the Foley scandal, although 75 percent said they didn't believe the Democrats would have handled it any differently.

Nor was McCain even the only Arizona Republican congressman to add fuel to the fire Tuesday. Tuesday morning Rep. Jim Kolbe, R-Ariz., elucidated a previous report from the Washington Post about an incident Kolbe was told about that involved a former page receiving inappropriate e-mails from Foley.

A Different Account of the Story

"Some time after leaving the page program, an individual I had appointed as a page contacted my office to say he had received e-mails from Rep. Foley that made him uncomfortable," Kolbe said in a statement. Contrary to the Washington Post story, Kolbe said he "was not shown the content of the messages and was not told they were sexually explicit," nor did he "have a personal conversation with Mr. Foley about the matter." Kolbe said he instructed his staff to report this complaint to the clerk of the House, who "supervised the page program. This was done promptly."

"I assume e-mail contact ceased, since the former page never raised the issue again with my office. I believed then, and believe now, that this was the appropriate way to handle this incident, given the information I had and the fact that the young man was no longer a page and not subject to the jurisdiction of the program."

Hastert said that Kolbe "was on the page board" and it was his job to report such an incident. "I don't know anything more about it," he said.

Hastert spent some of the day Tuesday meeting with evangelical leader K.A. Paul, founder of the Global Peace Initiative, who prayed with the speaker at Hastert's Plano, Illinois, home. Paul said he had hoped to convince the speaker to step down, since the Foley scandal had become such a distraction. __________________________________________________________________

_________________________Nobody living can ever stop meAs I go walking my freedom highway.Nobody living can make me turn back:This land was made for you and me.(Woody Guthrie)

Here's one you guys may not have seen. THIS is the story I have been waiting for!!!

_____________________________________________________________

The Meaning of the Foley Follies

by Debbie Woodell

IT IS, OF COURSE, ladies and gentlemen, a vast left-wing conspiracy that masterminded the fall of Mark Foley. My friends, the liberals conspired to wait until just before this crucial midterm election to spring this sleazy story upon an unsuspecting populace, risking the entire Republican stranglehold, er, leadership.

Yes, it is sometimes imperative to hear what a certain element thinks about important matters of the day. And, of course, there is a vast right-wing spin on the disgraceful conclusion of Foley's political career.

Besides accusing the "liberal media" of sitting on the story until election time, there has been finger-pointing at "liberals" who favor a "homosexual agenda" that would get someone like Foley elected in the first place. Pedophilia is pedophilia, not homosexuality, and, as a colleague noted, this "blame the gays" ploy is what the Catholic Church did when the priest sex abuse scandal broke.

Interesting how some stories come full-circle, since the ex-congressman blames abuse by a priest for his own salacious behavior in soliciting teen pages. So there's the first place where we really should point fingers. There is a special place in hell for the cardinals, bishops, priests and popes who allowed abuse to go unchecked for decades.

There are way more than 435 people to share in the rest of the blame. Start with Foley. How hard is it to keep your hands off children? So you're a power-hungry closet case; there is never an excuse to abuse your position in this way.

Next, there are all of those in Congress who knew about this, apparently as far back as 2000. It is despicable that someone - Arizona Rep. Jim Kolbe, House Speaker Dennis Hastert, Florida Republicans like Gov. Jeb Bush? - thought that a GOP majority in Congress was more important than protecting children. And, yes, the media share blame - not for sitting on the story, but for failing to investigate it vigorously.

And, finally, we are to blame - for sitting out too many elections, for not getting involved with politics, in some cases, not even putting up decent candidates to knock the incumbents out of their comfort zone, or out of office.

Now, with Election Day less than a month away, people in this country have way more than 435 reasons to go to the polls. You know what to do.

_____________________________________________________________

_________________________Nobody living can ever stop meAs I go walking my freedom highway.Nobody living can make me turn back:This land was made for you and me.(Woody Guthrie)

This is worth reading as well. I think the case could have been stated more emphatically, but this guy does hit on the key points of 1) what abuse is all about, and 2) that "mere fondling" and exposure and contact short of actual sex acts are still abusive and can cause tremendous harm to the victim.

___________________________________________________________________

Experts say Foley priest's denial quite typical

SUMMARY: "I've heard (this) time and time again from priests who have been grooming or setting a young boy up for molestation," said one victim advocate.

Experts on sex abuse say the comments of a Roman Catholic priest who acknowledged being naked with Mark Foley when the former congressman was young fit a pattern of distorted thinking that they've seen over and over among offenders.

The Rev. Anthony Mercieca told The Associated Press in a telephone interview that he was naked with Foley in a sauna, and was quoted in other interviews saying he also fondled him. Mercieca told the AP that the encounters weren't sexual, a distinction abuse experts found disturbing.

"The priest is very focused on the legalities here and I think it's important for the rest of us to see the enormous power differential between these two," said David Finkelhor, director of the Crimes Against Children Research Center at the University of New Hampshire.

"There is a tremendous abuse of authority and position involved in these activities whether or not they constitute child molestation."

Foley, 52, resigned from Congress last month after his sexually explicit computer messages to young male pages were released. His lawyer has said that Foley was an alcoholic, gay and had been molested as a youth by a clergyman.

The Archdiocese of Miami confirmed Friday that Mercieca, 69, is the person Foley said abused him as a teen. In phone interviews, the priest, who is retired and lives on the Maltese island of Gozo, has given details about his encounters with Foley four decades ago.

The priest told the Sarasota (Fla.) Herald-Tribune that he and Foley "loved each other like brothers" and that although he taught Foley "some wrong things" related to sex, Mercieca insisted their interactions were innocent.

"It was just fondling," he told WPTV of West Palm Beach, Fla.

From the perspective of people who have worked with abusers and their victims, that thinking is typical of a molester. Offenders, who are sexually immature, commonly view their involvement with their victims as normal and are baffled when others see things differently.

"This is the same type of rationalization that I've heard time and time again from priests who have been grooming or setting a young boy up for molestation," said the Rev. Thomas Doyle, a canon lawyer turned victim advocate.

The Herald-Tribune reported that Mercieca said he could not clearly remember one encounter "that might have gone too far" because he had been taking tranquilizers and drinking at the time.

"It's common that offenders will block out major pieces of the events. I personally believe that it's also part of the denial process, where they just don't, frankly, want to remember," said the Rev. Stephen J. Rossetti, president of Saint Luke Institute, which provides psychological counseling to Catholic priests who suffer from a variety of troubles, including sexual attraction to children.

"Those are typical kinds of statements of offenders who are not in recovery."

Abusers assume that because a young person seems to be enthusiastic around them, that any boundary crossing or sexual activity is OK, Finkelhor said. And if no penetration occurs, molesters convince themselves that the interaction does not hurt the youth, he said.

Mercieca's "basic approach is, 'You're trying to take something good and trying to turn it into something evil,' " said Peter Isely, a clinical social worker who counsels abuse victims and a leader of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests.

"He literally describes this 12- or 13-year old child as if they're equals in age and in personality and characteristic, as if there's absolutely no power differential," Isely said.

"This is what makes these offenders so dangerous."

States have different legal definitions of what constitutes child molestation, but many consider inappropriate touching a criminal offense. Mike Edmondson, a spokesman for the state attorney's office in West Palm Beach, Fla., said law enforcement action is over in Mercieca's case unless other alleged victims come forward, because Foley says he doesn't want to prosecute.

From a clinical perspective, Mercieca's de>

_________________________Nobody living can ever stop meAs I go walking my freedom highway.Nobody living can make me turn back:This land was made for you and me.(Woody Guthrie)

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